Prelude of Blood and Glory
by Helena Key
Summary: The war with Asgard gets worse, and Helblindi and Byleistr are called to return to the Winter Palace. Loki tries to decide whether to go with them or be left behind. / Sequel of Prologue and Birth of a Nameless Creature.


So, a couple of people asked me to write a continuation for Prologue and Birth of a Nameless Creature. This is what came out, hope you like it! :D

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><p>"When you honor your Gods properly…" Helblindi used to say, "… hunting gives you profits. When you do not, it gives you waste."<p>

However, the principle could hardly apply in this case, for Helblindi´s relations with hunting where, at least, poor. Gods were an unknown, distant entity, after all. So, what did it matter if the offerings he gave to them were not of the best of his repertory? He still presented them, by all means. Had he offered to small rabbits, or to thin bulls? Well, he couldn´t do anything else. His skills in hunting would not get better. The few animals that inhabited the cold tundras of Jotunheim were not what one would call worthy of a feast. They were just good enough to fill three empty stomachs.

The war that had been raging in the East never came to the moorlands where he lived. As sons of the former king, and future heirs to the long lost realm, they were never recruited to face battle (cursed to remain hidden until the conflict was over) and as for Loki… Well, a General once came to take a look to the runt that lived with Jotunheim´s Princes and, as he had said, _one look was enough._

When King Laufey was killed in the distant lands of Asgard, the Eternal Realm, Queen Farbauti brought his sons to the hut where they had lived many years ago, when they were but children; they were to stay there until the conflicts between both kingdoms were over. Now, almost four years later, they had not come to an end. In that hut there was a small room, that had been built shortly before their depart, that had remained empty for many centuries. Now Loki slept in that room, but it wasn´t the same. It had not been build for him.

Maybe it was for the way his stomach ached every night, when he failed to hunt something to feed himself and his brothers; maybe it was caused by the whispered prayers that he gave to his Gods daily, and that always remained unheard; maybe it was just the shame that washed over his face whenever he thought of his brothers and sisters, dying in the battlefield at the hands of the Aesir, while he lied there in his hut, hiding. But a new, burning feeling was growing inside the Frost Giant. An unknown desire that during nights gripped tightly at his chest and made him restless - the thirst for blood and glory running wildly through his veins.

Loki felt the change instantly, even before Byleistr. In Helblindi´s common silence now laid something different; the quiet merriment of someone who possess a new treasure. Loki suddenly felt the change, as if the shame of possessing a lump of coal had transformed in the pride of owning a precious stone. He didn´t say anything, nor did he concluded anything; he just knew.

He kept practicing with his new daggers, just like before, trying to recover that rusted, old talent. Byleistr always said that, whatever one may think (whatever the General had thought), the boy was and had been an excellent warrior before his accident. That´s how they called it, and Loki never bothered to give it another name. He didn´t knew that, at the small jotunn´s eyes, the title of warrior suited him ill. He didn´t knew about the type of power (forces of Dark Magic) that ran through that undersized body.

So, the day that Helblindi came to the meadow in the south of the forest (where Loki took a few steps back and then turned, artfully, forming one being with his tightly held daggers) the small jotunn knew exactly what he was going to say. He placed that disturbing look of his in Helblindi´s eyes, and realized that the man would have troubles to tell him this.

Understand the words directed at him was no longer difficult for Loki, but made himself understood was something completely different. He stopped his practicing immediately, and walked to the nearby edge of the forest, placing his daggers inside the sheaths hanging from his armor. He repeated on his head, meanwhile, what he was going to say; after eight months of practice, he was still unfamiliar with the Jotunn´s strange, guttural language.

Helblindi followed him with slow steps. He was preparing himself too. Suddenly, Loki found the words.

"Something troubles you, Brother." He said, looking up, and using that curious pet word that he had learned Jotunn´s always used among their kind. He felt silent then, and Helblindi waited, knowing that eventually, he would find the words again. "You are leaving, aren´t you?" He asked slowly, been aware for the first time of the strong asgardian accent that ran with his words. For a moment, he wondered if Helblindi and Byleistr had noticed.

"Yes, we are." Helblindi, on his part, was wondering if Loki knew where they were heading. _He knew_, effectively, but the man couldn´t know that. "The Council of the Winter Palace sent a letter, asking for our presence. It is time for us to leave." He said slowly, crunching his back a little to meet the small jotunn´s eyes. He kicked a stone out of his way, then, and turned towards his home. It wasn´t as difficult as he thought it would be.

"… When we first came here, we build a room; the room where you´re staying now. We called it the baby´s room…You know why? …You know who the baby is?"

_Yes, I know, _Loki thought bitterly. But he didn´t say anything.

"He was our… brother. By blood and not just by bond." Helblindi´s nose wrinkled. "It seems funny know. The arrival of this baby was something that was so sure that we build the room when Mother was only a few weeks pregnant. When he was born, we…" Helblindi looked at his home, the added wing of the structure, and then the chain of rocks around the forest. "He was… a _runt_, like you are. King Laufey didn´t thought him worthy of living among us jotunns... He sent him to the temple, as a gift to the Gods, and leave him to die in the cold." He concluded.

"Oh…" Was the only thing that Loki said. He had learned that syllable from Byleistr. It was very useful, because it could be interpreted in many ways.

"And then one day, out of nowhere, you appeared." He said in a low voice, not looking down at him, but straight ahead; that made Loki frown. "In the middle of the forest. Buried by the snow. Alone. Hurt… Dying." Then, Helblindi turned to look at him straight in the eyes, and Loki felt himself shiver at the intensity of that reddish gaze. "And I knew, from the first moment I saw you, that you were a test." The jotunn crunched, and his cold, oversized hands came to rest on each side of Loki´s face. He went completely still, and his eyes widened but a fraction; suddenly feeling very aware of his smaller size. "An opportunity to make things right… And _I_ _do _want to make things right, Loki."

The small jotunn fought not to squirm. He couldn´t move. His mouth felt dry. He couldn´t talk; in a matter of seconds he had managed to forget all the words and expressions that he had learned in the past few months. He wondered if this is what it felt like to be speechless.

"That´s why I want you to know that, I´m not forcing you to do anything." That last sentence made Loki frown again. Helblindi´s hands fell to his shoulders and squeezed a little. "This is your choice... So, call me when you´ve made a decision." He smiled down to him then and, for Loki´s relief, he finally released him. He just nodded silently, and after a few moments of staring and a quick pat in the shoulder, Helblindi turned around to leave.

Loki´s first conscious though was: _Well, this is over._

_What is over? _He asked himself.

He looked around him. _The quietness_, he decided. Just then he realized that Helblindi had left more than three hours ago, and that during all that time he had been practicing with his daggers, trying to hit all the targets. As if that work had been done by someone else, while he, Loki, had been gone.

He absently took the grindstone and pressed one of the daggers against it. When he moved it slowly he could hear water boiling in a saucepan, and when he moved it faster he could hear the low sound of a tree being felled (Where had he felt this strange pass of the time, as if life was moving around him without him realizing?) He moved the dagger slowly. The dried meat, the soothing coldness, the low quietness. Two gifted daggers. A freezing hut. A sense of… he though he knew the word, it was in the tip of his tongue, but suddenly it disappeared, as if it had never been there.

(No, the destroyed time never existed in those memories). He moved the dagger faster. Screams of death in the lands of Svartalheim. The heat of battle running though his veins. The snow falling. The cry of a night wolf. The birds flying to the south. Two cold hands lifting him. Blood. Everything at the same time. Not as parts of the same thing, but as solitary things. Lonely wounds.

That´s how time passed in those moments, without him realizing. Why was he remembering it now?

He looked around him, as Helblindi had done it, looking at the house and its irregular outline, and the land, and the forest, and the water in the basin. _When I am alone_, he though, _that´s how time passes_. That´s how it´s passing now; that´s means that I am alone again.

Then, he remembered Helblindi´s words, and he understood that he had always been alone. He and Byleistr had not been looking out for Loki; they had been looking out for the baby.

Once, in the battlefield, in the dessert, in the agony, he had been part of something, that had been painfully wrested from him. And if during those past eight months he thought that he was part of something else, for eight months he had been wrong. He knew anger very well. At some time in his life, it was the only thing that he could felt. It fell over him then, as an ocean wave, and then it left, leaving him lost and weak. And the object of that anger was himself. How hadn´t he realized? Hand´s he transformed his name in a crystallization of everything he had been and done? He had always been _alone, _and he had done everything _alone. _Why had he allowed himself to feel something else?

This was a mistake. A mistake as a midget giant and a blue-skinned Aesir; not an injustice, not a lie, but an unlikely falsehood… The idea that a person has him could be bonded to something.

Man. Brother. Jotunn. Loki.

Loki put the grindstone aside, and put his daggers inside the sheaths of his armor. He sat in the fallen three that was a few inches away, and remembered Helblindi´s not asked question. He took a deep, measured breath, and waited.

When Loki woke up the next morning he felt that there was something different. When he came out of his room and though the hut, and felt something different too; but he couldn´t tell what it was. It was as all the pass eight months had been a long, restful season, and now everything was on march again. All the colors around him were immeasurably more gray; the smells of the barn, the smells of the forest, the smells of the smoke were too more strange and intense. Something was coming to an end, he knew, but he couldn´t say what it was.

Byleistr´s old chariot was complaining and creaking at the foot of the hill. Loki started to walk towards the sound and realized that it was buried in the mud. It was full of luggage, he couldn´t help but notice. The right rear wheel had passed too close to a ditch and had fallen into it, so that the shaft was touching the ground and the wheel was turning about in the air. Byleistr was putting away a series of stones under the wheel, trying to stabilize it. When he saw Loki he set the rocks aside and walked towards him; the skin on his cheeks was slightly bluer. He looked tired.

"You need help." Loki told him sternly. Byleistr frowned, turning to look at the chariot, and then at Loki.

"Yes, I suppose I do." He said, looking unsure. The small jotunn tried not to sneer at that; he was tired of these man´s constant coddling, the fact that he was smaller than their normal standards didn´t mean that he was a disable person. _It´s going to end soon, anyway, _an annoyingly bitter part of his mind told him.

Loki came forward, and quickly began to place the rocks aside. Byleistr mounted the horse and ordered him to move. Loki put his arm under the rear edge of the chariot and, while the horse advanced, he leaned forward. His body stretched all that the vehicle docks allowed it and even a little more. Then he bowed again. The chariot rattled and gave several hops before finding ground.

Byleistr went out and came to watch the ditch; that inevitable and useless act of a man who collects a few pieces of porcelain and tried to seal the edges. "Before I´d swore that you were a warrior." He said, smiling. "But now I know the truth. You are a hydraulic lever."

Loki didn´t laugh at that. He never laughed.

They came back to the hut, and when Helblindi saw him he patted him lightly on the shoulder. Loki squirmed a little angry. He wanted them to leave. Everything else was over. The man turned around and handed him a cup of black coffee (the two brothers didn´t knew how to do any other coffee, and Loki simply didn´t care about it). The small jotunn just stared at him. He looked different. Happy as a cat in a haystack.

He eat. From his sit he could see the baby´s room. The bear sheets were gone. The bed, so large that it was twice his size, seemed strangely abandoned, even when (just a couple of hours ago) he had been sleeping on it. He wondered what that meant. When he finished, the two brothers stayed in the table, looking at him with expectation; no one said anything for a while. Suddenly, Loki was aware that they were waiting for him to talk. He remembered that dreaded, never asked question, and felt bile rise up his throat.

He put his hands over the table, and took a measured breath. He hadn´t practiced what he was going to say (he should have) and soon he discovered that he didn´t even knew what answer he was supposed to give. He looked at Helblindi for a moment, recalling the conversation they had the day before. The man wanted him to go, that´s for sure. He didn´t knew what Byleistr thought the subject. He himself had though that the decision had already been taken; apparently, it was not.

"Well… did you packed your things?" Helblindi asked, unexpectedly.

"My… things?" Loki asked slowly, even when it was a word that he had learned long ago. He remained himself that this was a mistake.

"Well, you are coming with us, aren´t you?" The jotunn asked, and Loki had to close his eyes for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Suddenly, he remembered the loneliness; not as a consistent memory, but as a feeling, a part of a whole, a piece of puzzle. He remembered lying in his cell, alone, unheard and forgotten, by everyone and everything that he had once known. He had promised himself then, that he would never wish anything else from life. He had concluded that, no matter where he was, no matter what happened, he would never again belong to anything. To anyone. He remained himself that it had been a mistake.

He knew that this (whatever it was) sooner or later would crumble apart in his hands; that no matter how much he tried, or what else he did different, the outcome would always be the same. He knew that eventually, he would regret it. He also knew that this was a mistake that he needed to make.

His lips parted for a moment, and after couple of weird, almost invisible facial twitched, he smiled; the most soft, sincere smile that his dark, bitter core would ever allow him to display. "Yes… I would." He said simply, slowly, as he usually did when he was using the jotunn´s language. Byleistr just nodded; his face difficult to read, as always. Helblindi, for his part, smiled widely, and stood up from his chair to surround the small jotunn with his arms.

This time, when Loki felt the cold, strangely large limbs surround his body, energetically lifting him from the ground, he didn't squirm.


End file.
